Changed over from Tiscali to
Orange over 2 months ago. the first day we connected at 1.4Mb. Second day at 670kbps and it's been downhill since then. Today my speed is 304kbps. I have phoned and phoned and can't get past 1st line tech support. Have threatened OFCOM and head office and still get nowhere. Our speed with Tiscali was a consistent 1.4Mb for many years. First they told me Tiscali had left a tag on et line. It took a month to get that taken off. Been off now for over 3 weeks and the speed has dropped and dropped. It took 10 tries today to even connect to email.
Our supposed max speed for our line is 1Mb but we know we can get 1.4Mb without dropped connection. Tiscali tried some years ago to upgrade us to 8Mb and it dropped every couple of minutes. Now Orange are trying to have us on 20Mb which simply won't work. We need to be on a 2MB connection. Why can't I get them to listen or who can I contact?
I am about tearing my hair out.

OK, first I got my son to reply last time because i haven't a clue what you meant or what attenuation means. What router stats? You mean give out my IP address etc? The Netgear Router is the one Orange sent and is far better than the original D Link I had.
I'm grateful for you help but plain "simple" English please.
All I know is they've got us on such a fast connection witH ADSL 2 that it simply won't work on our line. We are 6 miles from the exchange with overhead cables through trees; not a cat in hells chance of getting more than 1.4Mb but going off the last speed test they seem to have us capped at 500kbps. They have already told me that our line can support 1Mb- we know it can support faster. So what on earth are they playing at here saying the acceptable range is up to 500kbps?

It's from the BT speedtester site and from broadband speedchecker and from thinkbroadband; they all give the same results. We used to get 1.4 Mbps now we get 304 kbps.
The first day with Orange we had 1.04Mbps; next day it dropped to 687kbps then dropped constantly ever after to 304kbps now. With Tiscali we constantly had a download speed of 1.4Mbps or slightly more (never less than 1.4).

It's been plugged into the back plate since Orange took over. How can it be noise on the line when we had a perfect fast connection previously with Tiscali?
It makes no sense that Tiscali could manage a 1.4Mb connection and Orange can only manage 300kbps. Same phone line same set up. The only difference being that Orange say they have us on an "Up to 20Mb" connection and Tiscali had us on an "Up to 2Mb " connection

Edit: I think I know what they're saying. They only sell up to 20meg but if their equipment is not in your exchange they use the BT package but don't say anything to you. Probably charge more than the £12 pm they would charge for true 20meg.

If you want to post your postcode we can look into this further. Or if you prefer to PM it to me or Borednow we'll just post back your exchange code so retaining your privacy.

The only difference being that Orange say they have us on an "Up to 20Mb" connection

Then they are lying to you.

Just because noise wasn't present with Tiscali doesn't mean that your line can't develop a problem.

If you mean by saying "It's been plugged into the back plate since 0range took over" you mean that you have removed the lower part of the faceplate on the main BT socket and plugged into the test socket inside the wall box and there is still a problem then that almost certainly proves it is a line fault between the socket and the exchange.